The Forgotten Girls Read online

  “DONE!” EIK NORDSTRØM broke the silence a little later. “The description and photo have been sent out with a notice to contact the Special Search Agency if you recognize the woman or have any idea who she might be.”

  He looked expectantly at Louise.

  “Great,” she complimented. “Have you seen the pictures they took where they found her?”

  He shook his head.

  Louise brought them up on her screen and sent them to him.

  His furrowed face turned serious as he leaned forward, intently studying the photographs. “My mom had flowered smocks like that. They closed with a bunch of hooks in front, too,” he said. “I think it was the sixties but you would think they hadn’t invented the zipper yet. I didn’t know they still existed.”

  Louise contemplated the picture and nodded. From the clothes it did look as if time must have stood still for her.

  “How ’bout we drive down and speak to the guy who found her ourselves?” he went on. “We can put a little pressure on him.”

  “I already made plans to do that first thing tomorrow,” Louise said. She briefly wondered whether her temporary partner intended to show up on his own the next day or if she was going to have to pick him up again.

  “You go ahead and go to Roskilde,” he said, shutting down his computer and putting on his leather jacket. “I can talk to him. I have nothing else to do now anyway.”

  Louise took her eyes off the screen and watched him as he dug the last cigarette out of the pack, which he crumpled up and tossed into the wastebasket.

  “It’s not exactly a high-priority case that calls for overtime,” she objected. She guessed that he was the type of person who would come in late and then turn around and add extra hours to his time sheet if he ended up staying past 4 p.m. That wasn’t going to fly with her. “You don’t even know where Avnsø Lake is!”

  “I’ve got GPS.”

  “Sure, you’ll find your way to the woods but then that’s as far as you’ll get. There’s no coverage once you drive in there.”

  She was usually the one to insist on getting things done, she reflected. And she wondered if this could be a sign of her getting old and complacent. No way, she decided, picking up her bag. She may have just turned forty, but she wasn’t ready to be “fat and finished,” as the old Danish saying went. “All right, fine; we’ll go now.”

  On their way out they stopped by Hanne’s office. Louise left it to Eik to pick up the key for one of the department’s two cars. When they got downstairs, though, she held out her hand.

  “I’m driving,” she informed him.

  5

  THEY DROVE TOGETHER in silence. Louise turned her head several times to see if Eik had fallen asleep but he sat attentively, his broad hands folded in his lap, and watched as she turned left and passed a closed-down lumber mill with broken windows. The abandoned wooden structures had an air of ghost-like emptiness.

  Right on the woods’ edge sat a thatched-roof farmhouse with three wings almost obscured by the dense treetops. It was enclosed by a white fence and large gate. Louise slowed a little as they passed. The old gamekeeper’s house had been her dream home for years.

  “There’s a camping cabin all the way up by the meadow where the slope descends to the lake,” she explained as they drove down Bukkeskov Road. “But if we drive up to the cabin, we’ll have to park quite a way from where she fell so I’m going to continue to Avnsø Lake, and then we can walk along the path. It’s faster.”

  “Sounds like you’re pretty familiar with these parts,” he observed, looking at her with curiosity.

  “I’m from here,” she admitted, struggling to avoid the biggest potholes in the road. “Well, not from right here but from Lerbjerg over on the other side of the woods. I spent most of my childhood on these roads. When we got a bit older, we’d get together by the lake and make bonfires.”

  She refrained from letting him in on the fact that the gatherings had usually involved plenty of beer as well as joints being passed around. Not that she had smoked any herself, but she would lie in the grass with the others and gaze up at the stars.

  “Do you still come here?”

  “My parents live here,” she answered briefly. “But it’s been years since I’ve been to the lake.”

  Lies! Louise often went there when she needed to gather her thoughts. To her, Avnsø Lake had always been the most beautiful and peaceful place on earth. She loved sitting against a tree at sunset, watching as the light made the pitch-black surface look as if it were filled with flames. It was the ultimate meditation.

  Of course, there were painful memories, too. And a nightmare she’d worked hard to put behind her. But that was none of his business. Just like the fact that she had brought her foster son, Jonas, along the last time she went. In fact, none of what she did was any of Eik’s business.

  “There,” she said, pulling over. “We’ll park up here.”

  She could see the light reflecting off the water at the foot of the hill; a narrow path ran straight to it. This was where they used to ride their bikes when she was a child. It was also a good bridle path, especially when it was time to ride back up at a gallop.

  She pointed ahead to show him that they could also walk down a little farther and take the forest road, which was slightly less steep.

  “Is there good fishing out here?” he asked after he got out of the car.

  Louise nodded and suddenly remembered catching some small roach fish with a homemade fishing pole one time. She seemed to also recall something about pikes or perch. “There’s a path down by the water so you can walk all the way around the lake.” She pointed at the thicket to their right. “We need to get to that side.”

  They had to walk a quarter of the way around the lake to get to the place where the forest worker had found the woman.

  “Shhh.” Eik suddenly hushed and put a hand on Louise’s arm.

  She stopped talking and heard a child crying. The sound was heartbreaking as it reached them through the trees.

  “People come out here for picnics,” she explained, lowering her voice. “There are picnic tables down there.”

  Many people came to Avnsø Lake when the weather was nice. When Louise went to school in Hvalsø, they had come on several field trips out here as well. The girls would sit in the meadow tying garlands while the boys carved their initials in tree trunks or swung out over the lake from a rope that hung from one of the large trees. At least that’s how she remembered it.

  Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the sound of the child, who was now crying so hard that she worried for a moment if he or she could even breathe.

  “Why isn’t anyone comforting the kid?” Eik grumbled. He was already heading down the steep path, grabbing onto a few of the shrubby branches to keep from slipping.

  She locked the car and followed him.

  ON THE LEVEL stretch by the lakeside where the swing had hung from the tall tree for as long as Louise could remember, she spotted three small children. The child who was crying was a boy in a striped windbreaker and jeans. He sat on the ground, sobbing so violently that his entire face was beet red, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Next to him, a second, blond boy lay on his stomach. He was dragging himself across the ground like a caterpillar while emitting a series of loud, unhappy sounds that threatened to turn into crying.

  Louise stopped and looked at the last child—a girl wearing loose red clothing. She was sitting dangerously close to the water, her fingers in her mouth and dirt all over her face.

  Two, three years old at most, Louise guessed. Who left small children alone in the woods this close to a lake? She quickened her pace as the girl got up and toddled all the way to the water, where she dropped to the ground, leaning forward as if she wanted to catch the slight ripples lapping the edge.

  Before Louise was able to get there, Eik was beside the girl, quickly picking her up and carrying her to the bench by the swing.

  “Hello?” Louise called out,
looking around. But clearly there were no adults nearby.

  Eik had walked back and was crouched down next to the boy, who was still crying, his small body convulsing. Gently he lifted the child up in his arms and rocked him.

  “There must be someone here!” she exclaimed, her eyes searching the area.

  Eik had brought all three children to safety by the bench. He was now walking around with the crying boy in his arms while the others crawled on the ground.

  “Hello!” Louise called again. “Will you stay with them while I go look?”

  Without waiting for his answer she started running toward the boathouse, then followed the path along the lakeside. On several occasions she had to duck beneath branches that reached over the narrow trail. Anger was pounding in her temples. She could easily picture it: a couple of young people more interested in each other than in looking after the children they had brought along on their outing. She had done a bit of babysitting herself when she was in school and had also brought along a boyfriend once or twice, and it was easy to forget about the children when they were just sitting around playing.

  “Hello?” she called out once more as she stopped by a shed being used to store a boat. There was a large padlock on the door, and the place was deserted.

  She paused for a moment to look around. She could still hear the boy crying, but not as desperately. Louise continued to the forest road that most people used to get to the lake, gasping for breath as she reached the top, but once again finding no one.

  When she returned, Eik was sitting on the ground with the three children. The crying boy was almost asleep in his arms, and the two others were scratching in the dirt with small sticks.

  “I’ll try going the other way around,” she said, pointing behind them. Not a wind stirred the treetops. Louise listened for a moment then ran in the opposite direction.

  It wasn’t really a path. The trail had just been walked so many times that the dirt had been stamped down. Stumps protruded in several places, threatening to trip anyone who wasn’t careful.

  “Hello!” she called but fell silent when she spotted a child’s stroller a few yards ahead. It had been knocked over and was blocking the path. From a distance she could tell that it was one of those dark-blue, multiseated institutional strollers—the kind kept in nurseries and day care centers.

  “Shit.” Briefly she was stricken with fear that a fourth child might still be in the stroller, because it was completely quiet.

  Louise jumped over a tree trunk and ran to the stroller, the bottom of which was facing her. Relief washed over her when she found that it was empty. A diaper bag had been pushed down into the fourth seat along with a white cloth diaper. A clear plastic bag with a couple of water bottles and a pack of rice crackers had been flung from the cargo net and lay on the ground a short distance away. As if the stroller had been moving when it overturned.

  With an increasing sense of unease, Louise once again ran her eyes over the area while calling out a few more times before walking back to Eik. “Their stroller is over there,” she told him, pointing toward the path.

  The crying boy was now completely asleep in his lap while the other two had started to whimper.

  “Can you go get it so we can put them in?” he asked. She nodded and looked up through the sparse trees, fully aware that nobody would voluntarily leave three small children at the edge of a lake. She felt the adrenaline starting to flow.

  Then she went back for the stroller.

  Louise was bending down to grab the frame when she spotted her. On the ground between two dense bushes, the naked leg of a woman was visible with bloody scratches from the thorns.

  Louise let go of the stroller and ran to the thicket. “Hello,” she called, this time more quietly. “Hello!” She squatted down and protected her hand with the sleeve of her jacket as she reached through the thorns to lift the branches aside. The woman’s pelvis was exposed and her lifeless body lay in a contorted position.

  “There’s a woman over here on the ground,” she yelled loudly without considering whether the children would sense that something was amiss. Then she got out her cell phone and called for an ambulance.

  The dispatcher at the emergency call center hesitantly admitted he was unfamiliar with the area. “The easiest way to find it is coming into Bistrup Forest from the road in Hvalsø,” she explained. “Then they just need to go straight past the forester’s house. I’ll walk up to the road so I can guide them the last bit of the way.”

  Louise couldn’t see the woman’s face, so she walked around to the other side of the bushes. The branches tore at her pants as she pushed through the scrub.

  The woman’s forehead was badly battered. It almost looked as if her head may have been knocked against a tree, she thought, looking at the woman’s eyes, which stared blindly up toward the treetops above the dense bushes.

  Louise didn’t need to check the pulse to know that the woman was no longer alive. She looked at her face. She was probably around her own age, she guessed, and heavyset. Her hair had been pulled up in a ponytail but only a little of it was still contained by the elastic band. Louise looked at a strand that had come loose.

  Which seemed to indicate that perhaps the woman had tried to escape and then the perpetrator had grabbed her long brown hair and pulled her back. The injuries to the woman’s face were so brutal that Louise immediately thought there must have been rage involved. This victim had been beaten to a pulp.

  Louise took a few steps back then stopped for a moment and looked around. What first struck her was that someone had tried to hide the woman in the scrub, but she was puzzled by how sloppily it was done. If anyone walking on the forest road looked down, they could have easily spotted her.

  A shoe and a pair of pants lay on the ground some distance away. Louise walked over and bent down over the light-washed jeans. The button was torn out, the zipper ripped apart. The perpetrator had simply torn the pants off the woman without bothering to open them first.

  Then some dark shadows on the green forest floor nearby caught her eye, but she couldn’t tell if they were blood. It appeared that the assault had taken place between the trees.

  Louise, worried that the dispatcher might not have understood her directions, considered calling again as she walked back to Eik and the children.

  “She’s dead,” she said. “We’ll have to leave the stroller until the police get here.”

  “Yes.” All three children had fallen asleep and were settled next to each other on the ground. One was sucking his thumb. “Was it a crime?” he asked, standing up.

  Louise nodded.

  “If she’s a child care provider, I suppose it won’t take long before some of the parents notice their children are missing,” he guessed.

  She’d had the same thought herself. The deceased woman would not be difficult to identify. Presumably, she lived nearby or she wouldn’t be walking down to the lake with the children.

  “I’m going up to the crossroads to wait for the police and the ambulance,” she said, then hesitated. “Or do you want to go meet them?”

  He quickly shook his head. “I can’t find my damn way around here,” he said, getting his cigarettes out of his coat pocket.

  Louise started up the steep path. Her legs felt heavy; she was panting over the last part of the slope. She took a right onto the forest road and found after the first turn that the stretch to the intersection and the small triangle where the roads parted was farther than she remembered. She half-regretted not driving.

  When she finally got to the main forest road, she sat down on a tree stump by the side of the road to write a text message to Camilla. She had her doubts that she was going to have time to drop off the pearls her friend was waiting for.

  6

  SIRENS SOUNDED THROUGH the quiet of the woods long before the emergency responders came into view. Louise assumed that it was mostly to give her notice that they were getting close so she would be ready to show the way.

>   She got up from the stump and waved as the ambulance appeared over the hill a moment later. “Go straight about half a mile and then take a left,” she instructed them.

  Louise was about to walk back when a police car pulled up, stopping next to her. She took a step back in surprise when she noticed Mik Rasmussen behind the wheel. She hadn’t seen him in a long time—not, in fact, since he had ended their relationship.

  He had screamed, calling her names, bringing up past issues both slight and egregious, accusing her of all kinds of terrible things because she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, commit.

  She was going to die alone and he didn’t even really feel sorry for her, he had yelled. The words had kept resurfacing every time she thought of him, so gradually she had forced herself to stop.

  There was no doubt in Louise’s mind that he had meant every word, and on those rare occasions when she opened up that place inside herself where she was most vulnerable, she could sense her own fear that he might turn out to be right. Still, it was the result of her decision, years earlier, that she wasn’t going to make promises to any romantic partner. That she wasn’t going to rely on anyone so heavily that she could get so deeply hurt again.

  They had met in 2007 while she was “on loan” to the Mobile Task Force to assist the Holbæk Police Department in solving a case. They had shared an office, and at first she had seen the lanky local deputy as more awkward than charming. But then he had invited her to go kayaking and she had gratefully accepted the chance at a little diversion from the case as well as the station hotel in which she and her task force colleagues had been accommodated. They’d ended up drinking Irish coffee at his place. One evening led to another, and they saw each other for two years. He called it a relationship but to her it wasn’t quite as serious.

  “Hi,” she said, pushing away her thoughts. She gave a quick nod to the female colleague sitting next to him. She noticed that her own voice was a few degrees too cool and professional as she shared with them that the slain woman was possibly a child care provider or nursery teacher who had taken the children out for a walk.